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Skin-Color Hatred Drives American Politics and in Other Liberal Democracies

It’s tragic but biological and predictable. Fear mongering and ethnic, really just skin color, hatred always wins – research says especially in the USA. The “pathogen stress theory” is the best model of this currently being studied – and ignored, of course.

“White voters, in other words, don’t want to spend their tax dollars on programs that they think will benefit black or Hispanic people.”

“Voter racism, pushes both parties in the United States significantly to the right on economic issues.”

“The United States is marked by far more racial division than its European peers. Poverty, in the minds of many white Americans, is associated with blackness. Redistribution is seen through a racial lens as a result. The debate over welfare and taxes isn’t just about money, for these voters, but rather whether white money should be spent on nonwhites. “Hostility between races limits support for welfare,” Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote conclude flatly in the paper.

Now, it’s been a decade and a half since this paper was published, so it’s possible the evidence has shifted. I called up Sacerdote to ask him whether any subsequent research has caused him to change his mind. His answer was firmly negative. “It’s almost sad that it’s held up so well,” he told me.”

Lee and Roemer found that if racism played no role in determining whom Americans voted for, and people voted only on the basis of other cultural and economic preferences, the Democratic vote share between 1976 and 1992 would have increased dramatically. The average national income tax rate, they estimate, would be 11 to 18 points higher, as voters would be more willing to use taxes to finance a European-style welfare state.

“Voter racism,” they conclude, “pushes both parties in the United States significantly to the right on economic issues.”